← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
30 Oct 2010
00:28:08
The ruined heart of an American city, laid waste by economic collapse, is explored by...
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Hi there.
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You've downloaded the BBC radio programme from our own correspondent.
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We make two versions and if you'd
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like to hear our World Service programme, you'll find it on the BBC iPlayer. This though is the edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's presented by Kate Ady.
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Today, a search for the American dream in a city laid waste by economic collapse. We hear what happened when a South African policeman was sent to prison after turning to crime. Find nerves fraying in Istanbul amid an explosion of modern art. And buy in some body parts. And don't forget the candy. Americans are set for the biggest Halloween of all time. Widespread discontent with President Barack Obama and the way he's handled the US economy looks set to cost him and his Democrats dearly in Tuesday's midterm elections. The President came to power with bold plans to breathe new life into some of America's inner cities. But today unemployment still skies high, growth has slowed and the housing market stalled. Opponents say his policies haven't worked and are a waste of taxpayers money. Paul Mason has been investigating in one of the USA's most desolate urban landscapes. The predominantly African American city of Gary, not far from Chicago.
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I'd been to Gary, Indiana before to do the standard thing reporters do in this wrecked and poverty stricken city to tell the story of its decline. When I came here in March 2009, the mayor told me, with the air of fiscal stimulus beneath our wings, Gary will soar like an eagle and make our country proud. Well, 20 months into America's biggest federal spending spree Since World War II, Gary is still not soaring. $266 million worth of stimulus money has been spent, but only 327 jobs created. That is $800,000 per job. The short summary of why its problems are too deep. The Indiana state has pegged most of the money to one off projects. The American system at all levels of government finds it very hard actually to spend money effectively or quickly. In the process of finding this out, I had to clamber through all kinds of wreckage from the 20th century. Downtown Gary is a Mecca for urban explorers, not to mention salvage dealers. Much of it is ruined. The church, the lecture theatre. The post office opened by Henry Morgenthau in 1936. The Palace Theatre with its Moroccan Art Deco interior, all ramshackle but still standing open to the elements and to inquisitive journalists with torches. There's the school out of which white Students walked in 1945 when asked to share a swimming pool with black students. There's the Auditorium where Frank Sinatra stood on the day he came to tell those students that their strike was shameful, where he offered to fight anybody in the room and where he sang the anti racist song that would get him targeted as a commie sympathiser during the McCarthyite purge of Hollywood. The past is all around you in Gary, and far more vividly than in the ordinary played out post industrial town. I wondered what it was like to grow up here now. At the Emerson Wirt Academy, a public high school specialising in performance arts, I met students from areas the principal described as gang infested, who calmly listed the elite colleges they were about to apply for. The Juilliard School, Berkeley in Boston. The traditionally black Howard University in Washington D.C. they displayed a cold determination to go beyond the typical escape routes from a place like Gary. Which are the sports field or the stage? They wanted to be lawyers, doctors, presidents. We can sing like Pavarotti, one told me, but if we don't have education, we've got nothing. As the bell rang for the end of lessons, I saw them pulling at their pristine uniforms, tugging shirts out of trousers, loosening belts to make their trousers droop. The principal, who'd spent the whole afternoon ordering them to smarten up, noticed my confusion and smiled. We tell them, do what you have to do to get home safely on the streets. Be how you have to be to survive. Gary exists because the boss of US Steel in 1906 put his finger on the map where the railway lines converged and decided to build a town there. His name was Gary. You can tell even now that life was good for the workers in Gary in its heyday, despite the segregation and hard work, most of the housing is detached bungalows with porches and gardens. Many stand derelict.
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Many.
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But you can see there were good ones. What's gone wrong here has much more to do with the big historic challenges facing America than a mere recession or banking crisis. The question Gary poses is one we'll all wrestle with in the west at some point. How do you manage historic decline? Researching the history of these buildings I've climbed into, there's always a horrible moment. Sometime in the 60s or 70s, somebody gets stabbed in the back row of an Art Deco cinema and it closes down. Somebody schemed to renovate the art nouveau apartment block goes bust. What's inspiring despite all this is how resilient the community remains. When you meet Gary people, it's recognisably the culture of a factory city. Everybody seems to know each other, even the cops striding around in their kevlar at night in the middle of some routine mayhem on the streets, will turn to a juvenile at the edge of the crowd and say, hey, your grandma had a hospital yet. But the question remains, what happens to places like this long term? I'm told the in trays of American theatre directors are groaning with scripts set in an apocalyptic future in which America has collapsed. If I read one more scene of the Last Survivor crawling across a blackened landscape, I'll be sick, one told me. But Armageddon, apocalypse and decline do haunt the American consciousness. After a decade that began with 911 and ended with Lehman Brothers, maybe Gary's future will be as a film set for these dystopias. I hope not.
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Paul Mason it's almost two decades now since Somalia had a central government. Many of the years since have seen intense fighting. An Islamist insurgents group known as Al Shabaab, said to be linked to Al Qaeda, now controls much of the country. The fighting has seen hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing to neighbouring countries like Kenya. Mary Harper's been to meet some of them living in the capital, Nairobi.
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I know you. You're Mary Harper. The last time I saw you was in a BBC studio in London and you were giving me a very hard time. I looked up, blinking and confused into the twinkling eyes of a rather short, round and pale skinned Somali man. My name is Buba. Ah. It all came back to me. Ismail Hour Buba had been Foreign Minister of Somalia and yes, I had given him a tough time when I interviewed him. But now I was sitting in a comfortable velvet covered armchair in the lobby of the Andalus Hotel in the district of Eastleigh. Smoke from giant incense burners was pouring into the room. Women covered from head to toe in heavy niqab swept past me, pausing to stand directly in front of the burners to allow the sweet smelling incense to penetrate their clothes, a form of perfume. I caught the occasional glimpse of a sparkly high heeled shoe under the dull coloured cloth of their robes. The only other thing I could see was their eyes. The Andalus Hotel has over the past few years become home to many powerful Somali politicians and businessme Uber has lived there on and off for several years. And he's not alone. It made me sad to think that not just the hotel, but the whole of Eastleigh was full of Somalis who had fled their country during the past 20 years of chaos and bloodshed. As I was contemplating this and being lulled into a sleepy stupor by the incense, a vision caught my eye. A woman, her face exposed floated past me. Unlike the other Somali women I'd seen, she wasn't wearing black, brown or grey. She was in a filmy turquoise outfit, her perfect caramel coloured face exquisite against the bright blue. But something odd caught my eye. Across her veil, in large white letters were the words Somali Central State. Who is that lady? I asked my friend. Ah, she must be the wife or supporter of one of the self declared Somali presidents living in the Andalus, he said. And sure enough, there the president was a man dressed in a smart black suit with a metal badge of the blue and white Somali flag pinned to his lapel. My friend explained that these self declared presidents are usually Somalis from the diaspora, Canada, Sweden, Britain, the us and they often claim to rule parts of Somalia controlled by Islamist forces. Places they have no hope of visiting, let alone governing. But they don't have a bad life in the Andalus. It isn't just a hotel. It's an enormous multi storied complex and frankly you could get along quite nicely without ever leaving it. There's the mosque upstairs, right next to the radio station. There's a state of the art gym and a spanking clean medical centre, a barber's, a beauty salon, an estate agent, an Internet cafe and a very posh looking bank with beautifully carved wooden doors. There's the Andalus restaurant where I ate delicious roasted goat meat and drank freshly squeezed passion fruit juice. After the meal I ventured out of the Andalus and explored Eastleigh. New buildings are going up everywhere and it's all about shopping. I had to stop writing down the names of all the malls because my hand got too tired. But contrasting with the obvious commercial success of Eastleigh in is the shocking state of the infrastructure. I'm a frantic note taker and looking back through my notebook I can tell exactly the moment I drove into Eastleigh because my writing becomes completely illegible. Suddenly, after driving along smooth roads, the taxi started to leap and plunge into deep dirty puddles and potholes. The tarmac disappeared, replaced with mud and stones. Huge piles of ancient rubbish block the pavements. Electricity and water supplies are irregular. So bad is the provision of public services that a few months ago the people of Eastleigh stopped paying local taxes. Their decision was endorsed by a court. And there are many other ways that life is not easy for Somalis. In Kenya. They're accused of being pirates and members of Al Qaeda linked groups. Their financial activities are closely monitored. One rich Somali businessman told me the only way he could operate was to bribe at every corner. The Kenyans see Somalis as ATM machines, he said. Back in the Andalus hotel, I asked Booba for another interview, a bit worried that he'd say no after the last time. Of course he chuckled, and off we went to his room, which made me a bit sad again. It was his home, but it was in a hotel. Like so many of the other Somalis I spoke to, he has his own solution for restoring order to his country. And like the others, he believes that one day peace will return and he'll be able to go home.
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Mary Harper in Nairobi now Nelson Mandela knows more than enough about prison life. You don't really understand a nation, he says, until you've seen inside its jails. And many of the 240 prisons in Mr. Mandela's homeland provide a grim reflection of South Africa's troubles. They're overcrowded, often brutal places, and a large proportion of the inmates go on to offend again. But Hamilton Wendy's just been to the Lirkop prison to talk to one former convict who says a spell inside turned his life around.
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The Elvis Presley tie is the first thing I notice. He's my role model, sammy Matsubula tells me. I love his music. Sammy is neatly dressed in a quaint old fashioned way, with well shined shoes, dark jacket, and silver tie clip. We are standing in the grounds of a prison outside Johannesburg, where he conducts tours for school children to teach them that crime doesn't pay. He was a detective who turned criminal, and in 1993 he and his accomplices ambushed a cash van. Sami blocked the van with a police vehicle while the others attacked it with automatic rifles and a hand grenade. It was a messy, brutal affair. One of the guards was killed and a gang member wounded. Sammy was sentenced to 22 years in prison, of which he served 12 before he was paroled. I'd never done crime before, he says. I was scared. It was a terrible moment. After everything had happened, when we drove away, the question was just in my head, why did I do this? By midnight, he had been arrested. That first day when I came to prison, he tells me, I saw people stabbing each other. I felt fear. I saw that you had to look after yourself, always when you get your food, even when you go to the toilet. It was the beginning of an extraordinary odyssey of suffering and of courage. When I arrived in prison, he says, standing now outside the high fences and rolls of barbed wire, I had an opportunity to discover who I was. I committed a crime I am not proud of. He pauses. I feel bad, even though I didn't kill anyone myself. I regret is a scorching hot day, and beads of sweat are forming on Sammy's forehead. But he never loses his composure. You come to a point in prison, he says, where you realize, I can be something else. Prison makes you what you want to be. If you want to be a thug, then you will become worse. But if you are willing to change, then you can become someone different. South African jails are notoriously overcrowded. There is no privacy, and they are often violent. Sammy had to face the demons of his past, sitting on a narrow bunk bed, surrounded by all the other prisoners, some of whom he feared. I treated the warders and the other inmates with respect, he says. Then I asked for a transfer. I wanted to get away from my CO accused. That was when I really began to change. There is a seriousness about Sammy that hints of the pain he has undergone. He studied music, learning the guitar, drums and specializing in the piano. He got to grade four. One of the main elements in Sammy's changing life in prison was was that his family visited him often and were very supportive. It was a devastating blow when his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash by criminals in a car being chased by police. Can you imagine? He says. I couldn't pay my last respects to them. Still, he persevered with his determination to better himself. I achieved so many things. It's not over. I used to tell the others. Keep respecting yourself. But his positivity enraged the prison gang lords. When he started a gospel choir, it was the final straw. Some of us met to pray one night. After praying, they were just about to lock us up in our cells. I went out of the hall and two guys were waiting. They used a prison spoon that they had sharpened. They stabbed me in the back. I fought to defend myself, and the warders rescued me. They took me to hospital. But prison morality is simple and brutal. I never realized until then, he says, how many people liked me. Other prisoners retaliated on Sammy's behalf. They stabbed those two guys. As I came out of the hospital, those same guys were coming in. Still, his stance angered many in the prison. In 2006, I was poisoned. I had to spend a month in hospital. They even had to operate on me. To this day, I don't know who did it. Finally came the day he will Never forget. On the 11th of July 2008, I was released. Looking back, it was a hard time, but prison was effective for me. He didn't return home, but moved to another township where he could start again. I didn't feel shame that I was an ex convict. I let the young people know about my experiences. Many of them think that prison is just for animals. But I tell them prison can be for anyone, that the road to prison can start at school, with stealing a ballpoint pen or even bullying another kid. I don't want the youth to waste their lives.
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Hamilton Wende in Johannesburg While much of the world's tightening its belt and enduring straitened times, Turkey seems to be bucking the trend. Its economy is growing by some 7% a year. Some attribute the country's success to its government, controlled by the akp, the Islamist justice and Development Party. It espouses conservative policies, yet is also seen as a champion of business, the economy and of becoming a member of the eu. Turkey's new high profile is matched by a parallel boom in the arts centred on the city of Istanbul. Here there's been a spectacular growth in the number of museums and galleries. But as Rosie Goldsmith has been finding out, there may be a price to pay for this development.
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The district of Topani in Istanbul is famously diverse, bohemian, but also ultra modern. I pass a mosque, shiny new cash machines and funky boutiques, women in headscarves and a man pushing a cart of fresh pomegranates. Topani nobly bears the burden of all those cliches about Istanbul. One foot in the liberal, secular west, another in traditional conservative Islam. In the 1980s, these narrow streets and crumbling 19th century buildings were occupied by immigrants from Asian Turkey, just across the Bosphorus. It also became a magnet for artists because of the cheap rents. I grew up near here, the artist Gursun Karamustova told me. It was mixed on the edge all the time. But everyone got on. About a decade ago, Istanbul and Topani started to change dramatically. Business boomed, the art scene exploded and the old buildings were bought up and gentrified, several converted into art galleries. Today there are 10 major art galleries in Topani. Gursun is in her 60s and one of Turkey's star artists. She exhibits all over the world. She began as a painter and now works mostly in video and film. She showed me her leopard skin film about five women who meet secretly to indulge in their love of leopard skin clothes. It's funny and sexy. Anything goes, I thought, in modern Istanbul. But then Goosen told me another story. One evening in late September, some galleries in Topani came together for a joint launch party. Alcohol was served, forbidden under Islam. It was lively and loud. Suddenly, a group of outsiders, as Gosen called them, about 30 men appeared from nowhere, wielding batons, knives and pepper spray. They attacked the guests and broke gallery windows. Five people were taken to hospital. We have no idea who they were, gousen said. No one's been charged and the police are still investigating. But why did it happen? They wanted to scare away the newcomers, she suggested carefully. They're resentful of Turkey's new affluence and Western ways, another friend said. A few Internet blogs and local papers buzzed with the theory that the attackers were Islamic extremists. This is embarrassing for some. In Istanbul, a flagship for European Turkey, I wandered around the Istanbul Modern Museum, a brief walk from Tabhani, built five years ago by one of Turkey's wealthiest families, the Ecaja Bashis. It's privately funded, as are most of the arts. Bankers and business are the main patrons and collectors in this new arts boom, and it's mainly Turkish modern art they're collecting, including the work of Gulsun Karamustafa at Istanbul Modern. I watched one of her video installations, Memory of a Square. It's bold and beautiful family life on one screen, the coups and clashes of modern Turkey on another. Gulson is currently working on a British council project called My City, funded by the European Commission. We have no state support at all, she explained. The support we get is from commissions worldwide and private sponsors. She spends half her year working abroad and loves travelling. No wonder. A few decades ago, during a period of political instability, Gulsen was arrested and imprisoned. Her passport was removed and she couldn't leave the country for 16 years. Why? She was a free spirited artist. Her family were left wing intellectuals. Gulsin reassured me she feels no pressure from her patrons. I talk about my own history. I don't know what is typical Turkish art. What I do is global art. Ladies in leopard skin, two gay men in traditional dress embracing women in burqas tied up or with barcodes on their naked backs. The art I saw was provocative and brave. Too provocative for some. It seems people are watching what happens in the galleries of Topani carefully.
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Rosie Gailsmith now the Americans may be hard hit by the economic squeeze, but it hasn't stopped them splashing out a record $6 billion on sweets, spiders, webs and other Halloween paraphernalia. Tomorrow is the big day, and while the occasion may have its roots in ancient Celtic tradition, today it's big business stateside. In fact, David Willis in Los Angeles says it's become so popular in the US that some are forecasting that it could eventually eclipse even Christmas. When it comes to spending on novelties and decorations at the big store on
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Hollywood Boulevard, the bloody eyeballs have been running thin. Good year for body parts, said Steve Elovitz thoughtfully as he brush past a row of life size rubber skeletons. But it's the costumes that have been selling like hotcakes. Let's face it, when else can you be Darth Vader for the day and get away with it? Were Halloween a religion, Hollywood toys and costumes would be its temple. And with more than 25,000 ghoulish goods on offer, everything from werewolves feet in a choice of brown or grey to a truly terrifying fiber optic snake eyed skull, batteries not included, it's also a reminder of how America has taken this ancient festival and made it its own. When I first moved here 10 years ago, I was a curmudgeon as far as Halloween was concerned. I not only didn't understand it, I couldn't see the point of it. And when I reluctantly allowed myself to be coaxed into taking part in my first Halloween celebration, the result was a disaster. A few minutes after arriving, my Superman outfit split at the crotch and then the rubber band at the back of the mask, the one kept in place by that feeble little staple, kept snapping and soon the thing was so tight it was either slicing into my eyeball or staunching the blood flow to my ears. Added to which no one had warned me about Trick or Treat. Vaguely aware of the tradition of handing out sweets or candy, as they called it here, I'd set aside a couple of bars of Kit Kat only to find that it was gone in about five minutes flat and the doorbell was still ringing. The street outside was swarming with kids. It looked as if the neighbourhood had been invaded by an army of tiny spirits and superheroes. And peering out front window, I watched in horror as they made a beeline for my front door. Anxious to avoid being overrun by cartoon characters on a sugar rush, I did what anyone in such circumstances would do who doesn't own a firearm. I turned all the lights out and pretended there was nobody home, congratulating myself on my artful cunning. As I left for work the next morning, I suddenly realized I'd stepped in something sticky. Reaching down to find out what it was, I noticed that the front door was also sticky and so too were the windows. Those little buggers had egged my house. One of the things you learn about America is that it's pointless to resist its customs. Over time, they either seduce you or, as in the case of me and Halloween, bludgeon you into submission. Because at this time of the year, there really is no escaping it. Two thirds of American households put up decorations, skeletons and spiders, webs and other symbols of the supernatural. Zombie and slasher flicks crowd the television schedules, and even the most popular film at the cinema fits the mould. This year, It's Paranormal Activity 2, the trailer for which is so frightening, it's a wonder I'm not still hiding behind the couch. Whether it's the costume carnival in West Hollywood, an outrageous Mardi Gras, which attracts nearly half a million people, or its slightly less camp canine equivalent, which offers prizes for the scariest dog costume, there truly is something for everyone. And so, instead of questioning the sanity of friends who said Halloween was their favourite holiday in due course, I actually started to agree with them. All of which prompts the question, why do Americans love it so much? The answer may have something to do with the fact that it's the one holiday in the year which is all about fun. Unlike anniversaries such as Christmas and Fourth of July, which tend to involve long journeys and fractious family dinners, Halloween as a secular celebration is about staying closer to home and spending time with friends. And once they put away the costumes for another year, Americans will turn out to vote. Coincidentally, perhaps, these are thought to be the first elections in which a major party candidate has launched a TV campaign by declaring, I am not a witch. Having said she once dabbled in witchcraft, Christine o', Donnell, a Tea Party candidate, has subsequently sought to backtrack. But given the prevailing appetite for sorcery and the supernatural, voters may well have been open to a candidate with such powers. Because once you've tried every other way of balancing the budget, maybe what you really need is someone who can cast a spell.
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David Willis, who I suspect may not be at home when the trick and treaters come calling tomorrow. That's it. There'll be more from our own correspondence on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do join us. Goodbye.